by Ken Hood
Hoping that Fischart was flat on the ground and out of the line of fire, he waved his rapier in the direction of the foe, and said, "Vestige, vestige, vestige!"
He heard the eruption of bursting lungs again. Once? Or twice? The runaway carriage collapsed into a heap of lumber, sending eight horses mad with terror. Its lamps blossomed in golden roses of flaming oil, silhouetting three upright opponents for him, but also revealing him to them. One was waving his hands and chanting, and must be Gonzaga. Fischart was scrambling to his feet, presumably healed of his wound. Shutters were slapping open all along the street.
Two armed men sprang at Hamish. He had Zangliveri demolish the first, but then the second was all over him so that he needed his rapier for parrying and could no longer direct the demon with it. He retreated before a dazzling blur of strokes—cuts and thrusts, blades rattling in a frenzied clitter, clitter, clitter... Spirits! The man was a leopard! Even the don praised Hamish's fencing now, and as long as he had room to move, his rapier should give him a significant advantage in reach over saber and dagger. So much for theory. He was about to be skinned alive. Parry, parry, parry... The dagger would be a sword breaker and must be avoided. Oh, flames! This yokel was faster than Don Ramon himself, superhuman! He had to be using gramarye. Spirits!
More light blazed up in the street, making screams resound from every window, for the battle now commanded a sizable audience. Hamish was too engrossed on staying alive to see what was happening, although he could hear Fischart and Gonzaga howling conjurations at each other.
Fortunately, just when wee Hamish Campbell thought he was about to die of terror, he saw an opening. It was briefer than the blink of a hawk's eye, but it let him run his point into Wonderman's forearm. The swordsman yelped and fell back. He did not drop his blade, but pain made him lose his focus just long enough for Hamish to aim the rapier and give the command to Zangliveri. It was a rotten way to treat a fine opponent, but a flesh wound would not have kept him out of action long. Leaping over the collapsed remains, Hamish sprinted back to the battle of hexers.
Gonzaga had summoned his oversized ape-bear demon with the claws and fangs, while Fischart had countered with a man-sized salamander of coruscating fire, which was the origin of all the lurid lighting. Now the two apparitions were rolling and wrestling about the street, filling the night with bloodcurdling shrieks and a foul sulfurous stench. Only the hexers themselves knew how many demons were involved in that display. Gonzaga was nowhere in sight, which was good, but the lizard seemed to be growing smaller and the furry thing larger and louder, and that was probably bad. Fischart had turned his attention to finding the countess. As Hamish arrived, panting, he hurled a conjuration at the door, which at once shattered into fragments. A tongue of white fire roared out.
It missed Hamish, but only just. He leaped back, wondering if he had lost his eyebrows. It engulfed the old man, who fell to the ground, screaming and writhing as his clothes burned. Hamish glanced helplessly back and forth between that baleful doorway—as dark now as it had been bright earlier—and the dying hexer, whose flesh blazed, charring and reeking horribly of roast meat. He was beyond all help, both mortal and immortal.
Where there's one booby trap there are usually more.
Hamish dived through the door into the house and lived; no wave of fire threw him back. He found himself in a dingy, low-ceilinged room, lit by a single candle, and cramped by half a dozen chairs and a wooden table... cupboards and shelves on the walls... a closed door that probably led through to stairs and other rooms... He saw what he had come for in a corner—the woman in the dark cloak, gagged and tied to a chair. There was no sign of her assailant. He reached her in three steps, sheathing his rapier as he went.
"I come to rescue you, ma'am. Lisa is safe. I know who you—" He felt for his knife to untie her, and it was gone, lost somewhere in the evening's confusion. "Demons! I'm a friend. Will you trust me?"
No nod, no headshake, just eyes rolling in wild terror. He was soaked in blood, and she was beyond rational thought.
What to do? He looked despairingly at the doorway, where the multicolored flashes were fading and the ape's roars completely masked the salamander's dwindling shrieks. Fischart was dead and must be abandoned. Hamish couldn't even take the old man's body back with him, because Gonzaga must be still at large, as well as the accomplice who had tied up the countess.
Where there's one booby trap there are usually more.
This was a worse nightmare than the demon ride, the sort of experience whose memory will waken a man for years afterward, howling in sweat-soaked bedding. With a quick prayer for mercy to the tutelary, he made his choice and leaned over the lady to grip her arms. "Forgive me, ma'am, but we have to get out of here." She was shaking, but so was he. No trap so far.
Lupus. What was the word...?
What was the word?
"Panoply!"
The demon took them away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Having forgotten Fischart's warning that Lupus had a sense of humor, Hamish expected the chair to go with them, but the chair stayed behind, and so did the countess's bonds. She landed on her back in total darkness, and he fell on top of her. Making piteous noises behind her gag, she struggled and thrashed against his efforts to restrain her. That was a job fit for Toby, for she was a large and powerful woman in a frenzy of terror. Even if they were back in the adytum, there would be things around that could injure her. He wrapped his arms tight around her and talked comfort in her ear until she ran out of strength.
"Majesty! Countess! You are among friends. Lisa is safe. We know who you are—Karl Fischart... Baron Oreste... Lisa is here... Lisa is safe..." His eyes were adjusting. He could see shards of predawn light through the slits. It was the adytum. "Let me take off the gag, ma'am, and I'll escort you to Lisa."
She fell still, if violent shivering could be called stillness. He released her and felt for the cloth. By the time he had untied it, and they were both sitting up, she was weeping. It had been a rough night. For her, two very rough days. Fourteen very bad years...
"Come, my lady. My name is Hamish Campbell..."
And so on. He helped her rise. She staggered, barely capable of walking. The candle had gone out, so the excursion to Siena must have lasted longer than it seemed.
"Lisa? Truly?" She could barely speak, teeth clattering like a forest full of woodpeckers.
"She is here and unharmed. This is Fiesole, just outside Florence. You are quite safe here. We are sworn enemies of the Fiend." Going mostly by memory, he steered her across the room to the door. The cypresses were stains of black against gray, but dawn was coming, the day stretching as it wakened. Birds singing. He talked. She did not seem to hear.
He wondered how he was going to break the awful news to Toby that the Don Ramon Company had lost its hexer. That was almost as bad as losing its cavalry. He was so engrossed in that problem that he did not notice the two figures waiting at the edge of the trees until one of them squealed and came flying. It was Lisa. Toby loped along behind her.
Toby and Lisa? Lisa and Toby? Lisa crashed into an embrace, making predictable noises of, "MotherMotherMother!" and, "AreYouAllRight?" and "OhWhat'sTheMatter...?" And so on.
Gasping the equally predictable, "LisaOhLisaIsItReallyYou?" the countess staggered and would have fallen if Hamish had not steadied her.
Then he stepped aside, leaving the two of them locked together, weeping.
"Just shock. She's had a very bad time. Don't think she's injured."
Toby said, "You look a little dilapidated yourself. Any of that your own blood?"
"No." He rubbed his face and felt the caked stains. "No. None of it honorably earned, either."
"Rough voyage?" Toby thumped his shoulder.
That was about as far as he ever went in displaying emotion, but there could be exceptions to any rule—he also avoided women as much as he could and private assignations at all costs, yet he had been waiting there on the path with Lisa.
Oh, demons! What sort of thoughts were those? There could never be reason to be jealous of poor Toby, not where girls were concerned, and Lisa was forever out of reach for both of them.
"The water was a little choppy." The voyage had been much rougher for some. Hamish was shaking with reaction now, nauseated, thinking all confused. He knew the feelings and had seen them in other men often enough; it was only in books that heroes walked away from battles as if nothing had happened. How many corpses? And Fischart. Oh, spirits!
Before he could find the words, Toby said: "You came back alone?"
" 'Fraid so."
"Damn." Longdirk rarely swore and always very quietly. He never lost his temper. Part of that icy self-control he had learned from the saints at Montserrat as the only way to suppress the hob, but he had shown much of it as a child back in the glen. It was absolutely typical of him that now, seeing the Company crippled, his creation perhaps fatally weakened, and all his plans thrown in jeopardy, he said only that one soft word.
Then, "Any doubts? Any hope?"
Hamish shook his head, shivering as he remembered the blackened flesh burning like wax in the gutter. "None. It was treachery."
"What sort of treachery?" Longdirk's voice remained gentle, but there was menace in it.
"The gold thief. I'm sorry, Toby! You asked me, and I was too stupid... I should have seen this sooner. The gold was a red herring to distract us. Whoever he was, the intruder was in the adytum to tamper with Fischart's demons—one of them, some of them, I don't know. Not all of them, but when he invoked one in Siena to open a door, it destroyed him." It had not been a booby trap at all. If the door had been booby-trapped, then the countess would have been booby-trapped also, and Hamish would have suffered the same fate as the hexer. Fischart had seen the shadow of his assassin across his path, but the shadow had been there to doctor his demons. "And before that a man stabbed him with a sword. That doesn't happen to hexers... I should have guessed!"
"So should Oreste himself." Sigh. "He was a cantankerous, hagridden old blackguard at times, but you could never doubt his loyalty or his hatred of the Fiend. It wasn't your fault, and I'm very happy you made it back safely. Tell me all about it later." He glanced around at the countess, then inquiringly at Hamish, who shook his head.
"She didn't see."
"Good. Don't breathe a word to anyone else."
"Aye, aye, sir." Yet Hamish was surprised. It might be days or weeks before the camp realized that the hexer was missing, and thus the condotta might yet be signed before the Florentines learned that the Company had lost one of its major assets, the finest hexer in Europe, but that seemed very close to cheating—closer than he would have expected Toby to stray.
"Especially not the don."
"Of course." Hamish would prefer not to be around if, or when, the haughty, hair-trigger caballero heard the news from somebody else.
"And talking of El Cid," Toby said, "he's nastily close to his flash point. I know you've had a tough night, laddie, but can you back him up at the talks this morning?"
If he could sleep for a week first. "I can try." It would be a distraction to take his mind off the horrors. It was also a devil of an imposition on top of a night without sleep, so it was both flattering and inspiring to be thought capable—typical Longdirk. He could always wring more out of a man than there was in there to start with.
Toby smiled faintly, as if guessing his thoughts. "Just stun him if he starts killing people. And—"
Lisa interrupted, grabbing his arm to turn him around. "...great condottiere, Constable Sir Tobias Longdirk, the hero of the battle of Trent, the toast of Europe! Constable, my mother, Countess Maud."
Toby bowed over the lady's hand. "Your servant, ma'am."
"I cannot begin to express my gratitude, Constable."
"I am deeply honored to have been of assistance, my lady."
Bleary-eyed and thickheaded with fatigue, Hamish waited to be brought into the conversation, but that didn't happen. In a few moments Toby offered his arm to conduct the lady in the direction of the villa, so that she might be tended and restored by Sister Bona. Hamish followed, and it was only then that he realized that affairs were being stage-managed by Lady Lisa. She moved in close, linking arms. She beamed at him. In the unreal light of dawn, her eyes shone brighter than Lucifer, the morning star.
"I think you're wonderful!" she said. "You're so brave, so clever! You're marvelous! I've never met a man like you."
Oh, no! No, no, no, no, no, no!
"Lisa!" he croaked—wanting to shout, but whispering in case her mother would overhear. Or Toby. "Lisa, I told you! You mustn't fall in love with me!"
She gave him a look to melt his bones. "Your warning came too late. I already did."
After a moment, she added, "Don't you love me?" menacingly.
He had been a fool to say that word to her. Her challenge hid a desperate appeal for reassurance, and the comical bantam belligerence was a mask for terror. Hers was much more than the uncertainty of a first romance, the insecurity of a child plunging into the world of adulthood, for she was in genuine danger—awful danger—and the destiny that had been revealed to her so abruptly last night would terrify anyone. She needed a champion, a paladin, a hero. She had elected him. She had no one else to turn to if he refused her.
"Lisa, I have never met a woman to compare with you. I would die for you." He saw relief slacken the tensed muscles around her eyes, a hint of satisfaction curl the corners of those breathtaking lips.
"That will not be necessary," she said. "Will you live for me?"
"Till the day I die."
She let the smile blossom. "Say it, then."
Demons! "I love you, Lisa. I love you with all my heart and all my soul, and for all my days to come. I have loved you since the moment I first saw you. I will do anything for you, anything you ask or want, anything at all. I am yours, always. Body and soul, for ever and ever."
She sighed and walked on without speaking, hugging his elbow hard and staring straight ahead.
He'd really done it now.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"That's your third yawn in the last furlong," Don Ramon said icily. "How many bawds took your money last night?"
Whether he enjoyed a challenge or just liked to show off his equestrian skills, Don Ramon had collected a herd of the most vicious horses ever to eat the grass of Italy, and that day he was mounted on the worst of them, a monstrous eighteen-hand stallion named Brutus, which his squires were convinced was possessed—they were always threatening to put a blade through its heart. It would kick or bite anything that came within range, so Hamish was having great trouble keeping his dowdy, unassertive palfrey within reasonable distance.
"You wrong me, senor! I spent the hours of darkness doing good works among the deserving poor."
The horns of the copper mustache writhed in contempt. "Spare me your jackdaw Castilian. Your Italian cannot be any worse." His own would never be described as fluent, but that was a problem for other people. "And see you stay alert during the negotiations. How many deserving poor?"
"Four, signore."
"You're lying!"
"All four are less poor, but two remain deserving."
"I may decide to believe that," the knight conceded.
They continued their canter down the hill to Florence. Hamish was dressed as a humble clerk, being careful not to upstage the most successful condottiere in Italy, although that would have been difficult, for his companion was garbed in quasi-royal splendor—silk and sable and cloth of gold. Erratic and capricious in every way, he was especially unpredictable toward Hamish. Usually he considered him as being beneath contempt, like the vast majority of the human race, but he had noted his talents with a rapier and taken infinite pains to teach him the finer points of fencing, he himself being a master trained by de la Naza. Although their backgrounds were vastly different—son of a wilderness schoolmaster and scion of one of the oldest noble houses in Europe—they differed by le
ss than a year in age, and their adulthood had been spent campaigning together. After the sack of Ostra, Don Ramon had presented Hamish with a bagful of priceless medieval manuscripts. Once he had led him off on a wild all-night campaign of drinking and wenching in the slums of Milan and been still in full rampage when Hamish had passed out under the table—or had it been a bed? Twice he would have put him to death had Toby not intervened. Precedents were never reliable where the don was concerned.
"I am minded, Chancellor, to give these motheaten quill-scratchers a lesson in manners. I may even choose to overstate my case a trifle, for the sake of effect. If I decide to do so and you think it would be advantageous to remonstrate with me, then feel free to speak your mind. Provided, of course, that you temper your words with proper respect."
Toby might know what that meant. Hamish did not, and his nerves were still too jangled to play foolish games. "Longdirk told me to stun you if you tried to kill anyone, signore." Wondering what sort of cataclysm that would provoke, he looked up to meet the icy blue eyes.
Briefly they measured him for a coffin. Then the don twirled up his mustache as he did when he was pleased. "Only if I am dissembling. You will not interfere when I am serious."
"Sì, signore," Hamish said resignedly.
—|—
As they trotted their mounts along the busy morning streets—with Brutus constantly trying to sink his teeth in people and other horses and being consistently thwarted by the don—Hamish saw the soaring dome of the sanctuary straight ahead, and a sudden tug at his heart reminded him that he had survived an exceedingly narrow escape in the night and had also lost a comrade.
"Signore, I most humbly beg a few minutes' grace to visit the duomo."
The don's ginger eyebrows soared high, although his stare was shrewd and calculating. "You did have a busy night, didn't you? How many deserving poor, did you say? Very well. You will attend me as soon as possible at the Palace of the Signory."